67 family, to coerce them into selling the company’s shares, meaning the shares subsequently acquired by Clarín and La Nación were illegitimate. Some members of the Gravier family have sided with Fernández, while others have taken the side of Clarín and La Nación, yet another example of an instance where the murkiness of Videla’s dictatorship was used by Fernández in an attempt to limit the powers of Grupo Clarín (Schweimler, 2010). Macri’s Reversals and Recent Responses After Fernández finished her second term as president, her administration’s feud with Grupo Clarín was followed by an administration that largely benefitted the media conglomerate. Mauricio Macri was elected in 2015 and sought to improve relations between the press and the government. Very early in his presidency in 2016, Macri issued an executive order reversing many parts of the Audiovisual Communication Services Law passed under Fernández in 2009. Notably, the order removed constraints on the sale of broadcast licenses between media companies and eased limitations on the number of broadcast licenses a company can own (Freedom House, 2017). In essence, Macri’s reversals of Fernández’s policies reopened the door for Grupo Clarín to continue its domination of Argentina’s—and even Latin America’s—media landscape. Macri’s order also allowed for one of the biggest telecommunications mergers in history. In 2018, a merger between Cablevisión, owned partially by Grupo Clarín, and Telecom Argentina was approved by Argentina’s antitrust regulator. While the previous merger in which Grupo Clarín played a role was between two cable companies, this was between a cable company and a telecommunications company. The merger was announced following another change in policy from Macri that allowed for “quadruple-play” services, which allowed companies to offer bundles for fixed line telephone, cell service, pay television, and broadband internet access (Raszewski, 2018). In this case, quadruple play is yet another example of Grupo Clarín’s continued horizontal integration within Argentina’s media landscape, and Macri’s policies have allowed the conglomerate to pull even further away from other competitors that have nowhere near the resources to offer quadruple play. In fact, Grupo Clarín now owns and controls most of the infrastructure that both produces and distributes information and allows communication between individuals in Argentina. What began as a local newspaper outlet is now well on its way to becoming a media monopoly, and this power must be countered, if not disaggregated, in order to maintain the integrity of journalism within Argentina. The growth of the internet, virtual news, and social media offers a potential solution to create a more diverse media environment. Argentina’s “digital ecosystem is populated with initiatives and content that reflect the interests of different groups, including indigenous groups, LGBT+ people, feminists, and various religious congregations” (Freedom House, 2020). The internet provides users a platform to express alternative voices that may not have as much exposure in media controlled by conglomerates. However, it is difficult to see the internet as a permanent solution to subverting monopolization and encouraging a diverse media environment, particularly because Grupo Clarín and Telefónica control 63% of Argentina’s broadband, so even this outlet may well be constrained (Freedom House, 2020). While the technical tools for a free media landscape exist within Argentina, there remains a significant lack of diversity among the corporate players that control the majority of assets within the media sector, and something needs to change. Typically, policy has been the route taken by previous presidents to solve this issue, but it has been largely ineffective. The Audiovisual Communication Services Law passed under Cristina Fernández in 2009 attempted to curb the rapidgrowthof groups like Grupo Clarín, but even then, the conglomerate used its legal team to dispute the law and claim its unconstitutionality. Furthermore, Mauricio Macri’s immediate reversal of key elements of the 2009 law—a move made within his first few months as president—exposed the flaws in Fernández’s legislation. Macri did, though, merge the Federal Communications Services Authority and the
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